Genome Biology and Evolution (GBE) publishes leading original research at the interface between evolutionary biology and genomics. Papers considered for publication report novel evolutionary findings that concern natural genome diversity, population genomics, the structure, function, organisation and expression of genomes, comparative genomics, proteomics, and environmental genomic interactions. Major evolutionary insights from the fields of computational biology, structural biology, developmental biology, and cell biology are also considered, as are theoretical advances in the field of genome evolution. GBE's scope embraces genome-wide evolutionary investigations at all taxonomic levels and for all forms of life — within populations or across domains. Its aims are to further the understanding of genomes in their evolutionary context and further the understanding of evolution from a genome-wide perspective.

GBE is owned by the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE). Motivated by the continued growth of the field, SMBE conducted a grass-roots survey in 2007 to investigate the needs of the field regarding new publication outlets. The survey elicited a resounding response from members of SMBE and other scientists in the fields of genomics and molecular evolution. The key findings from that survey were that the field wanted an online only journal that was devoted specifically to the areas of genome evolution and comparative genomics and that was published under an Open Access model. The response of SMBE was to launch GBE in order to serve those needs of the field. The SMBE meeting attracts about 800 participants each year. As a reflection of the rapid growth of genomic technologies, about half of the science presented at each SMBE meeting is about genomics. With the help of the evolutionary expertise that is gathered in SMBE, GBE is positioned and designed to set the highest standards for papers in the growing field of evolutionary genomics.

Join our prestigious author community. Refer to our reasons to submit and author guidelines for further information.

Editors-in-Chief
 
Adam Eyre-Walker
School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, United Kingdom
 
Adaptive evolution, distribution of fitness effects, rates and patterns of mutation, synonymous codon evolution, evolution of base composition
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-5527-8729
 
 
Laura A Katz
Department of Biological Sciences, Smith College, USA
 
Genome evolution in eukaryotes, ciliates, amoebae, phylogenomics
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-9138-4702
 
Social Media Editor
 
Casey McGrath
mcgrath.casey@gmail.com
 
Science writing, academic editing, grant writing, social media editor, genome evolution, bioinformatics
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-9204-083X
 
Editorial Assistant
Genome Biology and Evolution Office
Lulu Stader
gbe.editorialoffice@oup.com
 
Editorial Board
Chantal Abergel
Information Génomique & Structurale, CNRS-AMU - UMR 7256, France
 
Microbiology, virology, giant virus, structural biology
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-1875-4049
 
 
Mar Albà
Biomedical Informatics Research Program, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Hospital del Mar Research Institute (IMIM), Spain
 
Transcriptomics, ribosome profiling, de novo gene, gene duplication, translation
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-002-7963-7375
 
 
Esther R. Angert
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Department of Microbiology, Cornell University, USA
 
Microbial ecology, bacterial evolution, symbiosis, mutualisms, bacterial cell and developmental biology
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-4787-5264
 
 
John Archibald
Centre for Comparative Genomics & Evolutionary Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University, Canada
 
Microbial eukaryotes, protists, organelles, endosymbionts, gene transfer, molecular evolution
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-7255-780X
 
 
Charles F. Baer
Department of Biology, University of Florida, USA
 
Population genetics, quantitative genetics, experimental evolution, mutation, Caenorhabditis
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0140-5814
 
 
Sandra L. Baldauf
Program in Systematic Biology, Uppsala University, Sweden
 
Protists, amoebas, phylogenomics, systematics, development
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000­-0003-4485-6671
 
 
Eric Bapteste
Institut de Biologie Paris Seine (IBPS) 7, quai Saint-Bernard, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, France
 
Molecular evolution, microbial evolution, sequence similarity networks, philosophy of biology, network of life
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-1966-1215
 
 
Marta Barluenga
Department of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN-CSIC), Spain
 
 
 
 
Esther Betran
Biology Department, University of Texas at Arlington, USA
 
Comparative genomics, gene duplication, sexual antagonism, transposable elements, transposable element domestication, Drosophila
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-4742-7963
 
 
David Bryant
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Otago, New Zealand
 
 
 
Belinda Chang
Departments of Ecology & Evolutionary, Cell & Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Canada
 
Evolution of sensory systems, visual protein evolution, comparative analyses of natural selection
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-6525-4429
 
 
Shu-Miaw Chaw
Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
 
Plant organelle genomes, evolution, seed plant genomics, plant phylogeny
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-2499-7071
 
Richard Cordaux
Université de Poitiers, UMR CNRS 6556 Ecologie, Evolution, Symbiose, France
 
Evolutionary genomics, molecular evolution, transposable elements, endosymbionts, Wolbachia, sex determination, sex chromosomes
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4997-735X
 
Maria Costantini
Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Italy
 
Molecular biology, molecular evolution, genomics
 
 
 
 
Tal Dagan
Institute of Microbiology, Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, ZMB, Germany
 
Molecular evolution, prokaryote evolution, phylogenomics
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-9042-192X
 
 
Sabyasachi Das
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, Emory Vaccine Center, USA
 
Comparative genomics, immune system genes and immunity, microRNA, multigene family, microbial genome evolution, evolutionary system biology
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-9116-9623
 
 
Luis Delaye
Evolutionary Genomics Lab, Department of Genetic Engineering, Cinvestav Irapuato, Mexico
 
Molecular evolution and phylogenetics, origins of novel genes, early evolution of life on Earth, natural selection
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4193-2720
 
 
Martin Embley
Institute for Cell and Molecular Biosciences, Newcastle University, United Kingdom
 
Early eukaryote evolution, phylogenetics, mitochondrial evolution, protists
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-1484-340X
 
 
David Enard
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, The University of Arizona, USA
 
Adaptive evolution, host-pathogen interactions, human evolution, population genomics
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-2634-8016
 
 
Brandon S. Gaut
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California at Irvine, USA
 
Genome evolution, population genetics, plant domestication, epigenetics
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-1334-5556
 
 
Takashi Gojobori
National Institute of Genetics, Japan
 
Evolutionary genomics, population genomics, comparative genomics, metagenomics, ecological genomics, biological database
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-7850-1743
 
 
Brian Golding
Department of Biology, McMaster University, Canada
 
Bioinformatics, molecular evolution, horizontal gene transfer, low complexity sequences
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-7575-0282
 
 
Josefa González
Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (CSIC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Spain
 
Evolution, genomics, transposable elements, adaptation, Drosophila, population dynamics
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-9824-027X
 
 
Ruth Hershberg
The Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
 
Experimental evolution, bacterial evolution, codon usage, genome evolution, genome composition
 
 
 
 
Federico G. Hoffmann
Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Entomology, and Plant Pathology, Institute for Genomics, Biocomputing & Biotechnology, Mississippi State University, USA
 
Comparative genomics, vertebrates, gene family evolution, genome duplication
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-5056-4929
 
 
Dorothée Huchon
Department of Zoology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Israel
 
Animal phylogenomics, mitochondrial genomes, comparative genomics, sponges, Myxozoa, tunicates, mammals
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-5047-244X
 
 
Laurence D. Hurst
Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, United Kingdom
 
Errors, mutation rate, synonymous sites, gene order
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-1002-1054
 
 
Dennis V. Lavrov
EEOB, Iowa State University, USA
 
Mitochondrial DNA, genome evolution, phylogenetics, Porifera, Cnidaria, Ctenophora
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-2745-1704
 
 
Emmanuelle Lerat
Laboratoire Biometrie et Biologie Evolutive, Universite Claude Bernard - Lyon 1, France
 
Genome evolution, transposable elements, comparative genomics, bioinformatics, epigenomics
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-6757-8796
 
 
Wen-Hsiung Li
Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
 
Molecular evolution, evolutionary genomics, regulatory evolution, analysis methodology, bioinformatics
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-2757-5026
 
 
Kirk Lohmueller
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, USA
 
Population genetics, natural selection, deleterious mutations, statistical inference, simulations, demography
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-3874-369X
 
 
Michael Lynch
Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
 
Population genetics/genomics, evolutionary cell biology
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-1653-0642
 
 
Partha P. Majumder
National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Netaji Subhas Sanatorium, India
 
Human genetics and genomics, population genetics, cancer genomics, statistical genetics
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-7009-7360
 
 
Kateryna D. Makova
310 Wartik Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
 
Mutations, sex chromosomes, regional variation in mutation rates, mitochondrial mutations
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-6212-9526
 
 
Judith Mank
University of British Columbia, Department of Zoology, Biodiversity Research Centre, Canada
 
Sex chromosomes, dosage compensation, gene expression, sex-biased genes
 
 
 
 
Esperanza Martinez Romero
Center for Genomic Sciences, National University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico
 
Microbe simbiosis, nitrogen fixation, transcriptomics, metagenomics, endosymbionts
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-2295-2606
 
 
Geoff McFadden
Botany School, University of Melbourne, Australia
 
Malaria, endosymbiosis, drug resistance, nucleomorph, plastid
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-5351-1627
 
Aoife McLysaght
Molecular Evolution Lab, Smurfit Institute of Genetics, University of Dublin, Trinity College, Ireland
 
Gene and genome duplication, new gene origination, comparative genomics
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-2552-6220
 
 
Michelle Meyer
Department of Biology, Boston College, USA
 
Non-coding RNA, ribozyme, ribosome, RNA-protein interaction, bacterial regulation
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-7014-9271
 
 
Liliana Milani
Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences (BiGeA), University of Bologna, Italy
 
Mitochondrial genome, mitochondrial inheritance, developmental biology, germline, non-model organisms
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-5052-2075
 
 
Nancy A. Moran
Department of Integrative Biology, 2506 Speedway A5000, University of Texas, USA
 
Bacterial genomics, symbiosis, insect evolution
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-2983-9769
 
 
Yoshihito Niimura
Department of Applied Biological Chemistry, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan
 
Olfaction, molecular evolution, comparative genomics, multigene family, chemical sense
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-7010-2537
 
Howard Ochman
Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas, USA
 
Genome evolution, microbial diversity
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-1688-7059
 
 
Mary J. O'Connell
School of Life Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Nottingham, UK
 
Molecular evolution, mechanisms of protein evolution, phylogenomics, adaptation, evolutionary theory
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-1877-1001
 
 
Rachel O'Neill
Institute for Systems Genomics and Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut, USA
 
Chromosome evolution, centromere function, genome biology and evolution
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-1525-6821
 
 
Balázs Papp
Synthetic and Systems Biology Unit, Institute of Biochemistry, Biological Research Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary
 
Evolutionary systems biology, metabolic evolution, network evolution, protein evolution, antibiotic resistance evolution
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-3093-8852
 
 
Gwenael Piganeau
Integrative Biology of Marine Organisms Lab, CNRS-Sorbonne Universités, France
 
Population genomics, phytoplankton, mutation rates, experimental evolution, recombination, dsDNA virus
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-9992-4187
 
 
Helen Piontkivska
Department of Biological Sciences, Kent State University, USA
 
Bioinformatics, adaptive evolution, host-pathogen interactions, RNA editing, transcriptomics
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-1844-864X
 
 
Davide Pisani
School of Biological Sciences and School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, UK
 
Phylogenomics, comparative genomics, evolutionary timescale, Metazoa, Eukaryota, tree of life
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-0949-6682
 
Ellen J. Pritham
Department of Human Genetics, University of Utah, USA
 
Mobile DNA, transposable elements, horizontal transfer
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-6548-8348
 
 
Susanne S. Renner
University of Munich (LMU), Germany
 
Evolution of plants, plant/animal interactions, plant sexual systems and sex chromosomes, theory and history of systematics, biogeography
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-3704-0703
 
 
Laura Ellen Rose
Institute of Population Genetics, Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf, Germany
 
Evolutionary genetics, population genetics, host-parasite coevolution, plant genomics, gene regulation
 
 
 
 
SAITOU Naruya
Division of Population Genetics, National Institute of Genetics, Japan
 
Genome evolution, human evolution, phylogeny construction
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-5321-1157
 
 
Sarah Schaack
Reed College, Department of Biology, USA
 
Mutation rates and spectra, mobile DNA, organellar genome evolution
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-7297-1565
 
 
Christa Schleper
Department of Ecogenomics and Systems Biology, University of Vienna, Austria
 
 
 
 
Paul M. Sharp
Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, UK
 
Plasmodium, Phytophthora, HIV-1, codon usage, molecular clock
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-9771-543X
 
 
Daniel Sloan
Department of Biology, Colorado State University, USA
 
Cytonuclear, mitochondria, plastids, endosymbionts, plants
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-3618-0897
 
 
Tanja Slotte
Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences (DEEP), Stockholm University, Sweden
 
Evolutionary genomics, plant mating systems, purifying selection, linked selection, adaptation, supergenes
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-6020-5102
 
 
Tanja Stadler
ETH Zurich, Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE), Switzerland
 
Phylogenetics, phylodynamics, trees, molecular epidemiology, macroevolution, paleontology
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-6431-535X
 
 
Jason Stajich
Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, University of California, USA
 
Comparative genomics, mycology, genome evolution, gene prediction, fungi, population genomics
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-7591-0020
 
 
Jay Storz
School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska, USA
 
Biochemical adaptation, hypoxia adaptation, protein evolution, gene family evolution
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-5448-7924
 
 
Maud Tenaillon
Génétique Quantitative et Evolution - Le Moulon, CNRS, France
 
Domestication, local adaptation, demography, plant population genomics, experimental evolution
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0867-3678
 
 
Yves Van de Peer
Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB / Universiteit Gent, Belgium
 
Polyploidy, whole genome duplication, phylogenetics, genome evolution
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4327-3730
 
 
B. Venkatesh
Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore
 
Comparative genomics of vertebrates, early vertebrate evolution, whole-genome sequencing and assembly, hox genes, intron evolution
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-3620-0277
 
 
Todd Vision
Department of Biology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3280, USA
 
Plant evolutionary genetics & genome evolution, computational biology
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-6133-2581
 
WATANABE, Hidemi
Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Japan
 
Comparative genomics, evolutionary genomics, bioinformatics, biogeography, virology
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-1892-9067
 
 
Marta L. Wayne
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Florida, USA
 
Evolutionary genetics, host-parasite interaction
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-9398-4034
 
Rachel Whitaker
Department of Microbiology, University of Illinois, USA
 
Microbiology, Archaea, population genomics, viruses, CRISPR
 
 
Kenneth H. Wolfe
Conway Institute, School of Medicine & Medical Science, University College Dublin, Ireland
 
Comparative genomics, fungi, yeasts, gene order evolution, genome rearrangement, centromeres
 
 
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-4992-4979
 
 
Soojin Yi
School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
 
Molecular evolution, genomics, epigenomics, neuroscience
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-1497-1871
 
 
Jianzhi Zhang
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, USA
 
Molecular evolution, evolutionary genomics, evolutionary systems biology, yeast, human
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-6141-1290
 
Ya-Ping Zhang
State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
 
Genomics, adaptive evolution, domestication, human evolution, molecular phylogeny, conservation genetics
 
ORCID logohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-5401-1114
 
 
Rebecca Zufall
Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA
 
Evolutionary genetics, microbial eukaryotes, mutation, experimental evolution